OSDisc.com Has Closed

August 4, 2019

Hi Everyone,
After over 16 years, OSDisc.com has closed. I started OSDisc to spread Linux and help new users get started. But providing DVDs today has little effect on the spread of Linux. I regularly see small distros that provide
tens of thousands of downloads, but few if any DVDs are provided by OSDisc. The vast majority of Linux users are downloading Linux themselves. And that's a great thing to see.
What we've accomplished:

Shipped over 300,000 discs and USB drives

Helped over 110,000 users get started with Linux

Answered over 25,000 tech support tickets

Given back over $200,000 to the open source community

Thank you to everyone for making OSDisc possible for the past 16 years.
Sincerely,
Ramsey Brenner
OSDisc.com Founder

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Linux Mint's purpose is to produce an elegant, up-to-date, and comfortable GNU/Linux desktop based on Ubuntu. Some of the reasons for the success of Linux Mint are:

It's one of the most community driven distributions

It is a Debian-based distribution and as such it is very solid and it comes with one of the greatest package managers

It is compatible with and uses Ubuntu repositories. This gives Linux Mint users access to a huge collection of packages and software.

It comes with a lot of desktop improvements which make it easier for the user to do common things

There is a strong focus on making things work out of the box (WiFi cards drivers in the file system, multimedia support, screen resolution, etc)

New features in Linux Mint 18.3 KDE

Linux Mint 18.3 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2021. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop experience more comfortable to use.

Linux Mint 18.3 "Sylvia" KDE Edition

Software Manager

The star of the show in Linux Mint 18.3 is the Software Manager.

A Better Manager

Although app stores already existed in Android and iOS and similar concepts had been developed in PCBSD at the time, Linux Mint was one of the first distributions to introduce a Software Manager, and that manager started to show its age. It needed attention and so a huge amount of work went into revamping it, making it look more modern and polishing it to give a better user experience.

The Software Manager

Popular software applications such as Spotify, WhatsApp, Skype, Google Earth, Steam or Minecraft are now featured and very easy to install.

The user interface looks more modern and its layout is inspired by Gnome Software. It's simpler, more consistent than before and it makes the application look much cleaner.

Many popular apps are featured and easy to install

The Software Manager is now also much lighter and faster than before. It no longer uses Webkit, browsing categories and apps is almost immediate, and it launches 3 times faster than before.

The backend was ported to AptDaemon and the Software Manager now runs in user mode. Consequently you do not need to enter any passwords to browse applications, and if you enter a password to install or remove an app, the authentication is remembered for a little while so you can install or remove other apps without having to enter that password again.

Under the hood the code was simplified and modernized, using the latest techniques used by the development team.

Flatpak Support

Thanks to Flatpak you can install bleeding-edge applications even if their dependencies are not compatible with Linux Mint.

A section is dedicated to Flatpak and the Software Manager lists the content of each Flatpak remote:

Browsing the Flathub remote in the Software Manager

Although Flathub is configured by default, you can modify the list of remotes. If you add new ones, they will appear in the Software Manager.

Packages and flatpaks are completely different things, but in the Software Manager, they’re presented the same way: They’re just applications you install.

Flatpaks look like other apps in the Software Manager:

Installing a Flatpak

You can browse each remote, see their flatpaks, review them, look at their screenshots, press the Install button and launch them just the same way you install other apps.

Once installed Flatpaks run in their own environment and in isolation. They do not impact the rest of the operating system. Below is GNOME Games 3.26 running in its own GTK 3.26 environment. This application could not otherwise run in Linux Mint as it is not compatible with GTK 3.18.

GNOME Games 3.26 running in its own environment

Backup Tools

Here is another aspect of Linux Mint which was significantly improved in 18.3.

Personal Files

The Backup Tool was almost entirely rewritten. Everything was reviewed: Its features, the way it looks and the way it works.

The Backup Tool

It is now dedicated to making a backup of your home directory, nothing less and nothing more. It saves all your files into a tar archive. When restoring a backup, files are restored in the exact same place they were before, with their original permissions and timestamps.

It runs in user mode so you no longer need to enter your password. The steps required to perform a backup or to restore data are much simpler than before and your configuration choices are remembered so you can repeat backups often without the need to re-select the same things over and over again.

Saving your software selection is also much simpler than before. Rather than showing you thousands of packages to choose from, the Backup Tool now simply lists the packages you installed from the Software Manager.

Saving your software selection

Under the hood, the code is also much smaller and much more modern. Performance and stability were improved, in particular around data compression and multi-threading. Like it was done for the Software Manager, the APT backend was switched to AptDaemon.

System Snapshots

Linux Mint 18.3 features Timeshift, a tool dedicated to system snapshots.

Thanks to Timeshift you can create backups of the operating system itself.

You deleted system files by mistake? You can recover them. You upgraded to a newer release and something isn't working well anymore? You can go back in time.

System snapshots with Timeshift

In preparation for Linux Mint 18.3, our development team worked in cooperation with Tony George, the developer of Timeshift, to improve localization, HiDPI support, look and feel, and support for window progress and encrypted directories. If you already enjoyed Timeshift in the past, we hope you'll enjoy it now even more.

System Reports

A new tool called "System Reports" was developed for Linux Mint 18.3. Its goal is to generate reports when software crashes occur, and to show information relevant to your computer and your environment.

Crash Reports

When a crash occurs, information is now gathered and a crash report is generated.

The "System Reports" tool lists the crashes and is able to generate stack traces for them:

Crash reports

When developers aren't able to reproduce a bug, that information is very useful. It's always been very difficult for non-experienced users to produce core dumps or stack traces. This tool helps a lot with that.

Information Reports

In addition to crash reports, the tool is also able to show information reports.

Unlike the release notes which show the same generic information to everybody, information reports are targeted at particular users, particular hardware, particular cases. Each report is able to detect its own relevance based on your environment, the desktop you're using, your CPU, your graphic cards...etc.

Information reports

The development team will use this tool to write reports and to address certain issues by showing information, workarounds, troubleshooting techniques which can help users affected by them.

Reports can even include actions and resolutions. Sometimes the development team knows how to solve a particular problem, but the solution cannot or should not be taken on the user's behalf. In those cases a report can simply ask the user and solving an issue can be as simple as a click on a button.

Other improvements

Linux Mint now features better out of the box support for spell-checking and synonyms in English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Russian.

Redshift was added to the software selection and is now installed by default. This tool adapts the color temperature of your screen based on the time of day, making it look warmer at night to reduce the impact on your eyes.

The Driver Manager now detects your CPU and presents microcode packages in a more meaningful way:

The Driver Manager

The Upload Manager (mintupload) and the Domain Blocker (mintnanny) were removed from the default software selection. They will continue to be available in the repositories but they are no longer installed by default.

The PIA Manager, a set up tool for PIA VPN connections (available in the repositories), now runs in user mode and no longer requires a root password to be launched.

PIA Manager

This release ships with linux-firmware 1.157.13 and the Linux kernel 4.10.0-38.